


With a Little Help from my Friends

by tptigger



Category: Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Science, leave it to power rangers to do things that don't exist, random references to other seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:25:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4270053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tptigger/pseuds/tptigger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shelby has a lot to learn about how science works; thankfully, now Kendall's willing to explain things to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With a Little Help from my Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mara/gifts).



> I think this story ended up slightly tangential to the plot; I went to look up protocols for how to extract dinosaur DNA from fossils for a "Shelby shows Kendall she can handle a pipette" story, and didn't find any. This story was the result. I hope you like it anyway, Mara!

Training was always tough on the Rangers; their accelerated metabolisms usually left them ravenous afterwards. Yet, on this particular day, Shelby hung back as the boys ran for the exit of the base, Tyler shouting that he'd race Koda to the Bronto Burgers, Chase hot on their heels. Riley rolled his eyes and following along at a more sedate pace.

"Something on your mind, Shelby?" Kendall asked, pushing up her glasses.

Shelby drummed her fingers on the counter nervously.

Kendall raised an eyebrow. "Are we back to that already?"

"It..." Shelby shifted her weight from foot to foot, idly picking up a notebook from the lab bench. "This may be a stupid question."

"The only stupid questions are the ones that need answering multiple times," Kendall replied.

"When we were building the scanner the other day, you said we could get away with the quick and dirty extraction method for dinosaur DNA."

"And we did." Kendall frowned.

"Yeah, it worked, but it got me curious as to what the hard method was: that quick and dirty method took me two hours!"

"Science isn't as fast as it is on TV," Kendall said.

"So I'm learning." Shelby drew a thumb over the edge of the notebook, flipping through the pages. "Anyway, I went looking on PubMed, and it was hard to tell, because some of the articles that looked interesting were behind pay walls..."

Kendall snorted. 

"What?" Shelby set the notebook back on the bench.

"Finish what you were asking, then I'll change the subject on you."

"OK. The point is, no matter what search terms I used, I couldn't find a more involved method of extracting dinosaur DNA from fossils," Shelby said. "Or any method of extracting DNA from dinosaur fossils. I found one group that used antibodies to show that dinosaur fossils can have DNA, but that's it."

"And both of your questions have the same answer. Sometimes, Shelby, the best resource isn't the internet, it's someone you know," Kendall replied.

Shelby raised an eyebrow. 

"For example, you can get around a pay wall for interesting scientific articles by having a friend with a university login. Like me," Kendall said. "If you email me the URLs, I can download the PDFs for you."

Shelby's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Sure." 

"You might regret that when I start school. Amber Beach Community College doesn't have the best library."

Kendall frowned. "You'd think they'd be able to tap into the UC system's subscriptions. But even then, we can't have you at an academic disadvantage, now can we?"

"Great!" Shelby paused. "Wait, you're distracting me, what does this have to do with DNA extraction protocols that aren't in the scientific literature?"

"There was this guy giving a poster at one of the first paleontology meetings I attended." Kendall paused as Shelby pulled a face.

"He was giving a poster? How?"

"A poster presentation," Kendall clarified. "Part of the point of a scientific conference is for everyone to discuss their research, but they can't give everyone who goes even a five minute talk; they'd have to run for a month. So most people submit an abstract and then create a poster with their data on it. Then you stand next to it at the appointed times and hope someone comes to talk to you about your work. I can't even remember what this guy's actual research was, I just sort of wandered by, and there was something about the way he was talking. He... it's hard to explain, but he would start to go on these tangents and then stop himself."

Shelby raised an eyebrow.

"Like he was holding something back," Kendall said. "I swear it was like he clocked me or something. He came to my poster a little while later. We had a pretty good conversation and he had some great suggestions for my thesis work."

Shelby hopped onto the counter.

Kendall glared at her. "What have I told you about lab benches?"

"Always assume they're full of things you don't want to eat or get on your clothes." Shelby rolled her eyes, but hopped off of the counter and spilled into a chair. "Sorry, this sounds like a long story."

"I ended up with his card," Kendall said. "When Keeper and I first started looking for the Energems, Keeper asked about DNA extraction, and I found the same thing you did in the literature: a whole heap of nada. So I reached out. He got back to me a few weeks later and asked to meet up.

"I almost didn't go, but Chase pointed out what could it hurt? He insisted on going with me though."

Shelby snorted. "You could handle one paleontologist."

"He's not even that now; he's a high school teacher," Kendall said.

Shelby rolled her eyes. "What's your point?"

"At the time I was really worried about compromising our identities and he wanted to meet in public. We met for pizza in Ocean Bluff because it was halfway between here and Reefside. This pizza place was strange, though, we had something called a Thrilla Gorilla... anyway, he spent the whole time we were talking either fishing for information or staring at Chase's energem."

"Are you sure that's what he was staring at?" Shelby asked, waggling her eyebrows.

Kendall smirked. "Chase thought the same thing and took off the necklace so he could play with it. It made it pretty obvious where the focus was. Anyway, after we paid, he handed me a sheaf of papers with some vague threat about what would happen if anything got leaked."

"So some random guy gave you protocols he won't publish?" Shelby asked.

"It gets weirder," Kendall said. She pulled out a sheaf of papers. "I gave you my annotated version. Partly because it's easier to read, partly because like a good recipe, a lab protocol can get a little messy."

Shelby raised an eyebrow at her.

"I didn't say it was good practice, but protip: never bring anything into a lab that you really care about; bad things could happen to it. Remind me to tell you the story of my favorite shirt and the bleach that found its way under my lab coat."

Shelby tilted her head. "Under your lab coat?"

"Later. Take a look at these." Kendall handed Shelby the papers.

"These markings, they don't look like anything I've ever seen before," Shelby said.

"Keeper says they're Aquitian," Kendall replied.

Shelby frowned. "I've heard that name..."

"It's another planet. There are rumors of them visiting Angel Grove in the late eighties, but people's memories of that time frame are fluid and the newspaper coverage is strangely spotty."

Shelby blinked. "So this random dude you met at a paleontology conference, who now teaches high school, had papers with markings in an alien language?"

"Yes," Kendall said.

"That is so strange."

"And I wouldn't have been able to contact him if I hadn't talked to him at a conference," Kendall said.

"What's your point?"

"You can't just bank on what you know: sometimes it's who you know."

"Like when I was always bugging you?"

Kendall snorted. "You're not even an undergrad."

"Yet," Shelby said, "but..."

"And here you are, wanting to go out on digs when I don't know you from Adam."

"Not anymore."

"Right," Kendall said. "Sorry about that. A year ago, I probably would have sat you down and explained that you were moving too fast sooner. Honestly, if we hadn't been looking for Energems, I'd have set someone to teach you how to clean fossils once they were removed from the dig site. Or cataloguing. You were trying to start very fast, and I had a world to save."

"I had no way of knowing that and you don't get what you don't ask for."

Kendall nodded. "I'm glad you asked me to give you another chance."

Tyler burst into the base, grabbing Shelby's hand. "Come on. Koda wiped out the burger supply before the rest of us could get any, so we're going for pizza." He started to pull her out of the base, and then stopped. "You should come too, Kendall."

"I couldn't..."

Shelby grabbed her hand. "Come on. You've been telling me about how important it is to ask people for things and get to know them. You should get to know the other rangers. You don't know what else you might be overlooking."

Riley entered then. "Shelby, Ms. Morgan, are you coming?"

"You're outnumbered three to one, Kendall," Tyler grinned.

"All right, all right," Kendall said, following the three rangers out the door.


End file.
